Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Annihilation” Makes You Think About A Whole Lot Of Nothing

[yasr_overall_rating]
 

A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.

The movie “Annihilation” is based on a 2014 book by author Jeff VanderMeer but that is all I knew about it before I sat down to watch Alex Garland’s celluloid adaptation. The trailers intrigued me and with a stellar cast including Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Gina Rodriguez, I hoped my lack of foresight would benefit me afterward. Sadly, it did not. I walked away from “Annihilation” as confused as the actors looked onscreen the whole way through the film. There may be biologists and scientists, which the story pertains to, that will lap it up and be able to clarify the entire story in minutes but when a movie needs to be explained to its audience, like last year’s “mother!,” it sort of defeats the whole purpose of sharing it with the world in the first place.

The film begins with a meteor smashing into a lighthouse on the east coast of the United States, we are never actually told where but we can assume that it is Florida since the author of the book says he got his inspiration for the story from a hike through St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Florida. Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biologist and also ex-military and along with her Marine husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), they live happily together in a nice house with no children. We know this because the story moves back and forth in time to help us catch up with everything that has happened in their lives. When he informs her that he is getting ready to ship out on a dangerous mission, it is the last she hears from him. A year later, he is presumed dead, killed in action, but when he turns up at their house, suffering from amnesia, not remembering her but recognizing her face, he quickly shows signs of ill health and collapses.

While he is being taken to the hospital, several black unmarked cars stop the ambulance and take him and Lena. She is injected with a serum and knocked out. When she wakes up the next day at a medical facility, she meets Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who knows about Lena’s husband returning to her and informs her that he is very sick and suffering from major organ failure. She takes Lena outside and shows her “The Shimmer,” a phenomenon that started with the meteor at the beginning of the movie and which is quickly spreading across the state of Florida, causing peculiar evolution to people, animals, and plant life. She claims that within twelve months since the meteor crash happened, several teams have entered The Shimmer but none have returned, save for her husband Kane.

Along with Dr. Ventress and three others, Lena volunteers to go with them, to try and determine what happened to the other missions that never returned, and especially that of her husband. As they make their way through the swamplands, Lena gradually begins to notice strange but beautiful flowers and vegetation, unlike any she has ever seen before. When they reach an abandoned old shack, while exploring its interior, one of the girls is suddenly pulled underwater. Lena manages to save her and they get back on land, but soon thereafter, they are attacked by a large alligator. Lena manages to kill it with her gun but upon further examination, the team ascertains that the alligator’s mouth is full of pointed lower and triangular upper teeth, typically only found in sharks. When one team member asks Lena if it’s possible for cross-breeding between the two species, she answers no.

Their mission is to reach the lighthouse, where everything started but along the way, the team members are killed off one by one. A half bear/half human hybrid attacks the group, killing two of the women and another, after realizing that she is metamorphosing into something not human, loses the desire to complete the mission and instead of fighting the transformation, welcomes it. When Lena and Ventress finally reach the lighthouse, they make their way inside, only to discover something so terrifying, were it to continue consuming the planet, everything as we know it would cease to exist.

The idea behind “Annihilation” is intriguing, to say the very least but its execution leaves a lot to be desired. While it is open to discussion as to what The Shimmer is, and what exactly it is doing to the earth, it is never fully explained. Now I have no problem with a movie that is left undetermined, in other words, you might interpret the ending one way while I might interpret it another and those sorts of finales make for great conversation pieces but when your entire narrative all boils down to the film’s protagonist basically telling you that she doesn’t know what is going on, and then the movie ends, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth and you feel like you were cheated out of two hours of your life. They say that film adaptations of books are never as good as the book itself and in this case, even though I have not read the novel, I would like to think in word form, a lot more of the story would be explained. The acting from the entire cast was uninspired, every character came across as dull and lifeless and led me to believe that this was actually the beginning of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in that story, once the aliens took over your body, they became dispassionate humanoids, devoid of any emotion so maybe whatever crashed into that lighthouse encompassed the planet immediately. The movie even has the audacity to steal the final scene from “Invasion,” forcing you to believe that everything that occurred really did happen for a reason. What reason I hear you say? As Natalie Portman’s character responds to that very question in the movie, “I don’t know!”

In theaters Friday, February 23rd

 

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James McDonald

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, James is a Movie Critic and Celebrity Interviewer with over 30 years of experience in the film industry as an Award-Winning Filmmaker.